Arcadia

Résumé du livre

"The central element of the exhibition is an installation of paintings entitled Arcadia which comprises 11 large paintings that hang together in one room. The installation creates the sense of standing in a decayed concrete folly at twilight and looking out through the pillars into a liminal, overgrown landscape that surrounds the viewer on all sides. At one end of the room, in the half-light, a partly concealed car is parked with one door ajar, and at the other end, a decaying pond of dark water and reflection is like an unused door to dreams that are on the edge of memory. The scene recalls a secret garden full of threat and invitation, a wilderness that was once tamed into parkland and is now reverting to its natural state. In addition to Arcadia, there will be 16 smaller works on show, in the form of boxed dioramas. Dioramas are a form of stilled life, which often allude to an Arcadian time, when humans were less disembodied by technology. Human attempts to represent reality are driven by a need to carve out a safe, more simple space within it. Poynton quotes Wallace Stevens, who said, 'reality is a cliche from which we escape by metaphor'. To grasp at life as it rushes by, maybe we have to pursue this paradox: we exist in metaphorical space"--michaelstevenson.com.